The Future of War: In Its Technical, Economic, and Political Relations

by Jean De Bloch

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Genres: History

472 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

Also published as Jan Bloch and Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch

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The Russian railroad magnate Ivan Bloch wrote a huge set, The Future of War, describing that the time they lived in was a time like no other.

He mentions the defensive power of high fire-rate weapons, like the machine gun but also the bolt-action rifle.

He predicted that logically, the stagnation of the offense would lead to defense, leading to stalemate. A stalemate would lead to a long protracted war in which more and more men were drafted and killed.

A protracted war would mean mobilization of a nation's entire industry and economy and people for the sole purpose of making war. This mobilization would lead to material shortages at home, civil instability and possibly revolution, and large debt and possibly high taxes.

Because the war became so costly, he predicted, neither power would want to make peace for anything less than total victory, which meant a harsh peace inflicted on the loser, which could mean the destruction of social and political order.

He basically predicted World War I to the letter. When H.G. Well's visited the front in 1916, he believed he was viewing "Bloch's War".

In a different vein, but wth the same amount of premonition, the British journalist Norman Angell wrote a book describing how the economies of the European nations had become so intertwined that war would cause much worse damage than any possible benefit.

He also warned, unheeded, that indemnities inflicted on the loser for the war would only further damage any post-war economic system by crippling a key part of the European economy. He was knighted and given a Nobel Peace Prize for his work and his resultant service in rallying pacificist sentiment in the United Kingdom after the war.

Source: Where have all the Soldiers Gone? - James Sheehan